#Ep. 45: Bitcoin Satellites, Lightning Network & Bitcoin as a Store of Value!

Ahmed Al-Balaghi — Sun, 14 Jul 2019 05:00:00 +0400

Ahmed and Dr. Marwan Alzarouni from the Dubai Blockchain Center went to Singapore to attend and speak at the World Blockchain Forum.

In this episode, Ahmed and the special co-host for this episode, Dr. Marwan, catch up with Samson Mow who is the CSO at Blockstream, a bitcoin infrastructure company.

Having spent two years in China working for BTCC, Samson reminisces over his time in Shanghai and goes over what it's like working in a Chinese exchange in a relatively early period in the industry. We then move on to talk about Blockstream, and how they are building out bitcoin infrastructure.

Blockstream is known for its product Blockstream Satellite (what the hell does this have to do with bitcoin?!). No, it's not a bitcoin node that they launched into space, but rather a satellite that is in space to allow more access to bitcoin where the network broadcasts the bitcoin blockchain around the world 24/7 for free. This means less dependency on internet access to broadcast transactions and according to Samson, adds extra resilience to the bitcoin network through network stability and cost savings.
Samson explains the methodology and rationale behind why they launched a satellite and how it works. Dr. Marwan follows up on extra technicalities on the Satellite and if there are applicable applications to third world countries.

Samson then goes on to talk about the Lightning network, what it is and also applications of it in third world countries. The discussion slowly diverts to bitcoin as a digital asset and what form it would take once the lightning network becomes mainstream. If bitcoin is digital gold now, would bitcoin become a medium of exchange when the lightning network goes live? Samson takes an interesting approach saying that bitcoin is everything and has multiple use cases.

Since Samson’s background is in gaming, Ahmed picks his brains on how blockchain can be applicable to gaming and to declutter the hype from reality on what's possible and not.

All this and more is discussed in this week's episode of Encrypted!

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:
Music Credit: LAKEY INSPIRED

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guests: Dr. Marwan Alzarouni and Samson Mow.

#Ep. 42: Facebook's Libra: The good, the bad & the ugly

Ahmed Al-Balaghi — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 05:00:00 +0400

Gabriel Abed Is the Founder of Bitt, a company known for inventing central bank digital currencies.

In this special episode, Ahmed and Gabriel take a deep dive into Libra, Facebook’s recently announced cryptocurrency that they will be launching in 2020. Everything you need to know about Libra such as what it is, the economics behind it, how it will work and also the Libra Foundation are all discussed and explained.

More importantly they discuss what Libra means for:
• Common users
• Central banks and banks
• The payments industry and companies such as Paypal, Mastercard and Visa
• The crypto industry and bitcoin in particular
• Governance and data privacy

Among the takeaways from this episode and the Libra project itself are:
• No banks are involved at the foundation level
• Private forms of money that are not government issued rarely exist, and if they do, they operate at such a small scale i.e. loyalty points, community points. Facebook’s willingness to create a cryptocurrency means they are creating a form of private money that can be globally accessed and could potentially be used as a means of payment besides the dollar. This begs the question; will we see more global companies making their own private forms of money via cryptocurrencies?
• Comparing Libra to Bitcoin is like comparing apples and oranges
• Libra could be advantageous for Central Banks as this could allow them to move towards central bank digitally issued national currency which enhances the utility of their national currencies. Just think on ramp and off ramp between cryptocurrencies like Libra and central bank digital currency. This would be huge!
• Announcement of Libra means one thing: The end user is the one that will be empowered! There will be increased competition in the payments space, and it means consumers have more options.

All this and more on this week's episode of Encrypted.